Saving The People From Themselves, Yes on Prop. 11

“Democracy” has become a
fetish in American political discourse. People complain constantly that
particular Presidents/legislators/judges/dog catchers follow policies which are
unfriendly to “democracy” and expect that to constitute a refutation of
the policies proposed by those individuals.

Anarchist groups and Neoconservatives both lay claim to an absolute monopoly on the term
and often will try to prove their point through the most undignified, polemical
accusations about the intentions of rivals. And here in California,
the one objection which frequently comes up in the debate over Proposition 11
seems to be that it will damage “democracy.”

It is regrettable that
nobody remembers the death of Socrates, for if they could, it would certainly
help to combat this irrational focus on maintaining a purity of
“democracy.” The American system has never been a pure democracy; in
fact, the founders did their absolute best to keep democracy restrained as much
as possible. While a despotism of one is doubtlessly unpleasant, the despotism
of the mob has the potential to be just as bad, and there is ample reason to
stop the people of a State from voting themselves into misery by putting checks
on their agency. Proposition 11 does this in the best possible way.

Story continues below

Go Beyond the Two-Sided Narrative! Get IVN’s weekly
round-up of news and information for independent-minded voters in
your inbox.

Proposition 11 sets up a 14
person commission to draw district lines, instead of allowing the elected
legislators to do it themselves. Given that any rational legislator would
choose to maximize their own power (and thus their own job security), the
status quo should be obviously unacceptable, since it leads to clumsy district
drawing based more on political musical chairs than on actual shared interests
within a community. Proposition 11’s commission, being composed of seven Democrats
and seven Republicans, and no lobbyists or big donors, would retain the sort of
partisan balance which theoretically should exist in the legislature now. This
balance would allow both parties on the commission to check each other and thus
create genuinely balanced districts, rather than skewed districts based on
whatever party happens to be in power at the time.

This sort of check on the
ability of parties to perpetuate their own power is desperately needed.
However, because of the national obsession with “democracy”, this
need has been obfuscated by talk about the legislative majority’s inalienable
right to draw district lines just because it is the majority. This ignores the
liberal (small ‘l’) tradition in America,
which specifically protects against abuse of power by the majority, and
besides, at the point where a policy leads to the distortion of democracy by
manipulating the sample of voters, it is arguably nothing but a parody of
democracy. This parody should be laughed off and Proposition 11 should be voted
into law.